


Ke Kanikau

by perspi, Siria



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s03e01 La o Na Makuahine, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:24:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perspi/pseuds/perspi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It made Chin angry, that they wouldn't stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ke Kanikau

It made Chin angry, that they wouldn't stop. He expected that they'd all attend the funeral, of course, and the tense, miserable wake afterwards. Steve and Danny had stood to one side, straight-backed in their dress uniforms, while Kono ran interference between a gaggle of aunties and Chin; everyone's gaze drawn to, and then repelled from, one particular patch of the wooden floor. 

Chin wasn't even surprised that they lingered even after everyone else had finally gone home: ties loosened and shoes kicked off somewhere near midnight, Kono and Danny bracketing him on the sofa while Steve went to get glasses. The bottle of whiskey that Steve had brought with him was expensive, the kind of drink you only brought out for births or for deaths, and when Steve raised his glass and quietly said, "To Malia," Chin's chest hurt so badly that he could barely breathe through it. 

They finished the bottle, then switched to something that Kono'd gotten from one of her surfer friends, some semi-legal rotgut that burned on the way down and made Chin's eyes water. 

"Paint stripper, Christ," Danny wheezed, but he poured out the next shot, and the one after that, with a liberal hand. Chin supposed that if there was one thing Danny had experience with, it was learning to let go. Maybe not in a way that a therapist would approve of, maybe not in the way that you _should_ , but Chin was tired and Malia would never walk through the door again and holding his glass out for another drink was the easiest thing to do.

Kono put him to bed at four—helping him into the spare room and draping a blanket over him, leaving a glass of water on the bedside table and a basin in easy reach. As Chin drifted off to sleep, he could hear her talking softly with Steve and Danny out in the hallway, them agreeing that they'd take a cab home and leave Kono here to watch over Chin for now—they'd be back later that morning with breakfast and to take her home. 

Chin expected all that, because he'd just buried his wife, because four days ago he'd looked Frank Delano in the eyes and listened to Delano say the words _dirty cop_ and shot him anyway. What he wasn't expecting, what made him truly bone-deep pissed off, was that the team... just kept coming over. 

Danny showed up on Saturday mornings, invited himself in to start the laundry and water the plants and didn't ever say a word about how very clean the floors were, how all the rugs had been taken up. The freezer was always stocked full of Kamekona's seafood casseroles, the lasagnes that Danny swore were made using his grandmother's family recipe, and Kono was almost always in his kitchen in the mornings, hair damp from the morning's surf. She made coffee and noise and, during those hazy moments between waking and sleeping, the clatter of mugs against the counter-top let Chin believe that it was Malia in there. Steve showed up on the weekends when Danny had Grace, and sometimes late at night, like he knew what it was to be afraid to sleep. Sometimes, when Chin fell asleep in the armchair on those nights, he woke up to a blanket wrapped around him and the sight of Steve sitting on the floor, back against the sofa, frowning down at a book in his lap. 

Chin finally lost it spectacularly one rainy Sunday afternoon, because every time he turned around, one of them was standing there like they were standing watch over him and he couldn't take it any more. They were there, they were always there, and she never was. He let Danny bear the brunt of his rage, solid Danny, two feet planted in the middle of the kitchen (Malia's kitchen, the kitchen Chin had built for _her_ ), and when Chin finally wound down, ran out of expletives to throw like knives, Danny just pulled him close. 

"We should have been there with you," Danny said, palms pressed against Chin's shoulders, his voice choked like he'd been the one screaming. "You shouldn't have had to call us, we should have been _right there_ , and I am so sorry for that, Chin. I'm so sorry."

"I tried," Chin said, "I tried, I did everything I could and she's still gone.” His throat felt raw and he was shaking like he hadn't since that first day, but Danny didn't pull away, and Chin knew that soon Kono would be coming over, that Steve would be calling to check up on him—and maybe Chin didn't know how to let go yet, but he'd finally decided that he could still hold on.


End file.
